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The Rundown!

Puck is a weekly webcomic that, in the words of one fan, is "mostly irreverent humor concerning a pretty girl with freckles and a hot she-devil who wears fan-service costumes." Surreal fantasy slice-of-life crazy-type stuff about the world's funniest redhead! Updates Tuesday.

For those of you who doubt the existence of an A-Team episode that guest stars Boy George, let me reassure you that it does exist. ‘Cowboy George’ dropped in the fourth season, when ratings were lagging and guest stars were the order of the day. It’s sort of awkwardly awesome. Boy George is at his sassy, drug-addled finest; he’s obviously having a hoot of a time kicking down doors and insulting armed redneck bad guys.

I decided to re-watch the episode in order to do this comic, and it’s a good thing I did. Panel one initially read “the big guy with the gold chains,” but upon re-watching the episode, I noticed that Mr. T. actually doesn’t wear his chains in that episode! Seriously! I guess he felt it was useless trying to out-glam Boy George. The things you learn…

Oh, and for those of you who don’t know who Boy George is or what the A-Team is, you’re just too young for my comfort level. Seriously, get older or something. I’ll try to slip in some Pokémon refs for you in the near future, though. I wanna keep the younguns happy here.

Oh, and if you didn’t hear the news…

My good friend Daniele Giardini, an Italian video game designer, just put the finishing touches on his indie game, GOSCURRY, and he actually put Puck in the game as one of the avatar choices for players! This makes Goscurry the first video game to ever feature Puck! It’s only six bucks, and it’s an insanely good game!

I’d recommend watching it if you get a chance. It’s not as awful as it could have been. It’s worth it just for the scene where Culture Club’s music plays over a fight in trucks with machine guns and stuff. It’s weird juxtaposition at its kooky finest.Here’s a brief video synopsis.

Season 1! Season 2! Season 3! Not so good season 4! Awful, awful season 5! It’s all on DVD! (I own seasons 2, 3 and 4 on DVD. I didn’t bother with season 1 and 5, which I believe are both only half-seasons.) And I don’t think they actually cost that much. Heck, I just checked, and season two is going for under 13 bucks!

I saw that episode when I was a kid. I thought it was a “very special” episode to teach kids the dangers of British Pop and large Black men who like to cuss. But for what its worth Miranda(I call her banana because of that lady on the banana stickers) will grow up as pop culturally relevant as we all are, still waiting for new gargoyles episodes and playing new Pokemon because it reminds of of old Pokemon and hating it because it doesn’t remind us of old Pokemon enough! I lost where I was going with that Kahlua at midnight probably is not the best way to get the creative juices flowing.

I sometimes feel like I’m failing at the task of raising pop culture-aware children. Sure, my son has seen all four cinematic-release Ninja Turtles movies, but it occurred to me the other day that he hasn’t seen Mary Poppins. Mary f#$%in’ Poppins! I’m a bad dad. Oh, and Mr. T never cussed. He only drank milk and led a virtuous, manly, butt-kicking life. Which is sort of why I love him so much. He had the strength of character to risk being uncool by making himself a real role model for young kids. And it was genuine; it reflected his stance in real life too.

Don’t forget Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Also, you said I have powers of premonition. Sure enough. A Culture Club joke. I think mine was better though. You did earn a few bonus points for getting in an A- Team reference with it, but not many because all you did was make a little fun of something that already exists, rather than make up something original. To be fair though A-Team+ Culture Club? You can’t make that $h!T up. Only someone did, and then put it on TV. And then you made fun of it nearly 3 decades later. (Are we really that old?) Now you need a Magnum P.I. joke. And the Village People. Not too sure how to make that work, but that’s why you have a web-comic and I don’t. Now get cracking lest “I pity the fool!”.

Well, now we know WHO’S THE BOSS. Eventually everyone feels GROWING PAINS. And we all have FAMILY TIES. It’s no SMALL WONDER. Maybe we should all BOOK IT, to the HEAD OF THE CLASS. Or we could meet at the ROADHOUSE on 21 JUMP STREET to discuss our FAME!

I’m probably wrong, but is this the first Puck strip that doesn’t have Puck (at least as a third person reference) in it? I’ve been reading for quite a while and have probably forgotten a few strips, but she’s usually front-and-center.

Strips not involving Puck at all are rare. There’s the Satan comics; they tend to have nothing to do with Puck. But yes, this is that rare comic where it’s following the main cast and Puck is nowhere to be found. To be honest, you’re going to see more of those in the future, because now that the pregnancy arc is over, there are going to be a few more plot lines following Phoebe and Daphne.

Yeah, but it’s easier than ever with the internet for them to do it themselves. I think, though, that most kids have a point where “the world didn’t exist before…” thing, based on their parents taste in music and television. For me, it’s about the early 70s, the only exception being the Beatles, because the Beatles were ahead of their time in the 60s.

My brother’s kids are like that too, and so will little Miri, because our tastes only stretch back as far as the 80s.

Though this may just be me over analyzing due to being woken up with the fire alarm in 22 degree F/-6 degree C weather. Ran outside in shorts, shoes and a tshirt, only to find out it was a false alarm, because someone burnt breakfast for their kids in my building.

What a wake up. But you’re right; most kids have a cultural point of take-off, and seldom does it thoroughly extend into the 60’s for today’s youth. I’m older, so I’m a bit more familiar with the 60’s, though it far predated me. Perhaps eventually the entire 20th century will be a blur. Perhaps that’s for the best.

Judging by your university years, you’re not that much older than me, so I feel you. It seems though that people’s tastes are “one decade back, then cut off at some point”. Like for me; I like 70s hard rock and the more upbeat movies from that time, like Star Wars and Indiana Jokes, even though I wasn’t born until 82, but my parents graduated high school in the early 70s. Although, with sites like Pandora and Youtube, it’s not as hard to keep up on your tastes as it used to be.

My brother’s kids are going to be the same way; they were all born up to 2010, so their tastes may stretch back to the 90s, depending on what their parents watch and listen to.

Though, there are anomalies. My dad is familiar with technologies most men his age don’t bother with, and he actually enjoyed music my brother and I liked when we liked growing up. Granted, what we liked had a foundation in what he liked, so take that as you will.

Well, I guess I’m quite unusual: I grew up in the 80s and 90s, while my parents’ music taste started with late 60s; yet my own music taste reaches as far back as the late 50s / early 60s Rockabilly and Twist era, and even 30s / 40s Swing… Only before that “the world didn’t exist”.

This is remarkable, because I got little exposure to that music in my childhood. The radio station my parents were listening to had a lot of 80s along with some 70s and I think late 60s, but only occasionally played an odd Rockabilly hit. Yet it was enough to catch my interest, striking me as an enormously energetic kind of music, which I always wanted to hear more of.

(Most often they were playing that one medley, which starts with Glenn Miller, rushes through some Rockabilly and Twist hits, and finishes with Glenn Miller again… It took me quite some time to realise these are actually distinct music styles from several decades. They were all good.)

Never seen A-Team personally but I heard it’s supposed to be rather good.
…Having Boy George included sounds… Awkward. Might just be me. I dunno. I need to watch that episode.
…Am I imagining things or did Miranda actually calm down?
Also, because it’s almost new year (let’s face it, this is the last comic you’ll do this year unless you somehow got a time machine to make another one for tomorrow); Happy New Year EG.

True story: I listened to a lot of Beatles tunes when my son was in his infancy. Whenever a song written by Paul would come on, he’d be happy and calm. Whenever a song by John came on, he’d start crying.

My daughter is all about disco and 90s dance stuff. When we’re in the car with her, she generally insists on listening exclusively to the Village People, Kool and the Gang, ABBA, C+C Music Factory and other such offerings. It’s … yeah.

My son would sit on my lap while I worked at my draft table listening to Jimi Hendrix music on my cd player. Maybe why he draws very well and loves hearing Jimi now.

I was a weird dad though; I started him out early watching certain horror flicks because I love the genre. Sleepy Hollow being his favorite at the time and to this day we’ll watch them sans the wife who hates them.

Good to get ’em early, I say. Nothing like a good horror movie for baby! I spent the evening after my son was born looking after him in the hospital’s ‘family room’ by watching Lethal Weapon 3 on the TV. He was appreciative.

I’m generally not into horror movies (except sometimes those that are so silly you can’t quite tell whether they are being funny on purpose 😉 ) — but Sleepy Hollow is a whole different story. It’s not quite a parody, but it’s not entirely serious either; rather, it plays with the genre in a friendly way. (When it came out, some called it a “homage”, which is quite fitting I guess.) And it actually barely has any serious gore, which is a big plus in my book.

Thanks to YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, Amazon and a ton of nostalgia websites, looking backward is a lot easier than it used to be. No more looking in the attic for your Beatle’s, Duran Duran, Iron Butterfly, Rush and Nirvana albums or for some TV show you recorded on a VHS tape that you can’t play anymore.

Miranda’s gonna have fun when she’s older reminiscing with Mom and Dad.

You know what? The weird thing now is that the thirty year-old stuff is now often much more available than the brand new stuff. With new shows and properties, corporations tend to guard the rights pretty fiercely and often have oddly restrictive release rights with just a few carriers. Old stuff doesn’t have that. My kids are far better acquainted with shows of the past than they are of current shows.

Ah, *that* episode… Yes, I do remember it. Not as in “it’s coming back now”, but rather I have actually been remembering it the whole time. Probably better than anything else from the series. It was so strange, so totally out of place… Not that I didn’t like it — I was just wondering, what does that got to do with the A-Team?

I also remember that Mr. T was actually named B A Baracus in the series…

Oh, and while I didn’t know that back then, nowadays I consider “Karma Chameleon” among the best dance songs ever — though “Wake me up before you go” is even better 🙂

Seriously. Season Four, where they were running out of ideas and resorted to a ton of guest stars. Other guest stars included Rick James (awful) and Hulk Hogan (twice). Boy George, though, is the weirdest and most magical of the guest star episodes.

Laugh-In is an interesting cultural relic. I’ve been watching through the entirety of the old Monty Python TV show on Netflix (roughly same time period as Laugh-In) and it’s interesting to see what’s still funny and what’s really not. Timing, I find, is the biggest difference. Fifty years later, the comedy beats are a little faster than they were, and that makes me see the old stuff as a little plodding. Some of the stuff, though, is on point. And some of it from the old Flying Circus is downright bold. The ‘Men Who Would Be Mice’ satire of the cultural treatment of gay people is ridiculously on point.